Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Inuvik (May 06/01) - Contractors that are behind on health and safety training stand to lose out on potential business from southern oil and gas companies, say industry experts.

"Oil and gas companies require that their subcontractors have staff trained in first aid," says David Connelly, president of St. John's Ambulance for the NWT and Nunavut. "We've heard reports that Northern companies are missing out on business because their employees don't have first aid certification, but we don't know the magnitude of the problem."

Companies lose out on business needlessly because training is easily available and affordable.

Small and medium-sized companies can even offset the costs of training with funding from the Workers' Compensation Board.

Rick Clarke, coordinator of oil and gas training for Aurora College in Inuvik, says training helps make the workplace safer, and it makes good business sense.

Clarke spent 10 years working in the Norman Wells field. He says most companies that didn't have safety programs in place in the late 1980s and early 1990s have since gone out of business.

"The main reason is they didn't put together any kind of proven record of their safety program, training and regulatory compliance."

He says even if a company has a good safety record, there's no way to prove it to clients if there is no audited safety program in place.

"The number of companies in town that have an audited safety program are very, very few," Clarke says. "Set up audited safety program and three years down the road, you have all the paperwork to prove your compliance. Once you get it running, it runs itself."

Aurora College can help companies help to set up safety programs. The required suite of courses (Standard First Aid, Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS) and Transportation of Dangerous Goods (TDG)) is available in most communities through the Aurora College Learning Centres. For companies located in communities without a Learning Centre, Clarke says getting a course arranged is as easy as picking up the phone.

"The hardest part is to get the message out there that one -- it's required, and number two, it's available," Clarke says.